Montville Police Arrest Fire Company Public Information Officer

MONTVILLE, CT — Police on Tuesday arrested a fire department official accused of taking photos of a person involved in a February car crash in Oakdale without the person's permission.

Chesterfield Fire Company Public Information Officer Steven Frischling, 45, was arrested at his Niantic home.

According to state law, first responders who respond to a crime or crash scene cannot take a photo of a victim without consent and cannot share that photo, but there's an exception for a first responder who takes images “in the performance of his or her duties."

Frischling claims that as the fire department's public information officer, and one who routinely takes photos and shares them publicly, what he was doing was part of his duties.

Montville police don’t agree.

Lt. David Radford said in an email to Patch the person in the crash did not want his photo taken and did not know, nor wish, for it to be posted to Facebook. Radford also said that a child related to the car crash victim was “affected by the crash and believes it could be due to the Facebook post."

Radford wrote in a report that, “nobody involved in the crash had even known that the crash scene was posted on Facebook.”

In an email to Patch, Frischling said Montville police “sent two East Lyme cops to wait at my house, another to wait at my station,” and added that he was arrested and handcuffed in front of his children. He said once he was in custody and handed over to Montville authorities, “they had three Montville cruisers there and the Lieutenant.”

“Violent criminals don't get that,” he said, “Me? Charged with two counts of photography.”

Frischling, who takes photos and video of fire and accident scenes will often share on social media and with journalists, has been at the post for the past five years and has been a photojournalist, he said, for 20 years. The fire company’s Facebook page called Chesterfield PIO posted about the arrest and charges. The post ended with a statement that the fire company stands by and supports Frischling.

The images in question remain on the Facebook page. They depict an accident that required hydraulic cutting equipment to get the driver out of the car. The person’s face is blurred.

This is the text of the Feb. 7 post:

“This morning, shortly after 9:15AM, as the snow began to fall over the region, your Chesterfield Fire Company and Oakdale Fire Department, along with a Montville Career Firefighter and East Lyme’s Flanders Fire Department, operated on the scene of a two car motor vehicle accident, with entrapment, on Route 85 at Grassy Hill Road, Sunday, February 7, 2021, in Oakdale, Montville, CT.

The motor vehicle accident resulted in Route 85 being closed to traffic for more than half-an-hour, and three patients being transported to the hospital by the Chesterfield Fire Company, Oakdale Fire Department and Flanders Fire Department, along with an L&M Hospital Paramedic.

Your Montville Volunteer Fire Companies depend on you, our neighbors, to help protect our community. You are on this planet to make a difference, to do something. Leave a legacy. Join your local Montville Volunteer Fire Company.

Images may have a digital blur to obscure portions of a patient’s identity and their license plate.”

Frischling steadfastly maintains that the law specifically allows him to photograph accident scenes and victims within the accident scenes. He said that the law was created to protect victims, but exempts public information officers “who carry out these duties every day throughout Connecticut.”

He said the photos show no visibly identifiable victim in the images and that the photos do not violate medical privacy laws.

“Whenever an accident or incident is photographed by PIO Frisching, great care is taken to make sure the privacy of victims is not compromised. Images are either captured from angles where a victim cannot be identified or are digitally manipulated to hide their identity,” the fire company posted.

His court case does not yet appear on the state judiciary page. Charging documents say he had a $1,000 bail but Frischling told Patch he was released without bond.

Read the charging documents here:

Montville Police v Steven F... by Ellyn Santiago

>